The Doors are perfect paintings; a relief from the picture world I’ve created for myself. Gary Hume More Quotes by Gary Hume More Quotes From Gary Hume A painting should be tough; it should have muscle, but I have to find some tenderness in it, too. There has to be that dynamic. Gary Hume find muscle painting tough People constantly describe me as a formalist or even a minimalist, but I'm not really bothered with the rules of painting or the history of painting. My approach is that everything is mine. I take what I can use from wherever, and then I forget where I've taken it from. But there is no point me making anything that looks like anyone else's. Gary Hume me painting history people My desire to be an artist really came out of being broke and unemployed and incapable of holding a job down. That's what it was driven by for sure. Gary Hume down job artist desire I do think you get lonelier and lonelier being an artist as you get older. Gary Hume being think you artist I'm probably creative for half an hour a day. The rest of the time, I'm just doing what's necessary to make that creativity visible. Gary Hume rest day creativity time I don't make political work. I don't make work that criticises the state. I make as human work as I can. Gary Hume human i-can political work I don't vote. I voted Labour once, in that moment of euphoria. I know that if people only made a voice for change, then change will happen, but I'm not that person. I'm painting pictures. Gary Hume moment painting change people The disenfranchised should be going to art school - not the franchised. Gary Hume going should art school The surface is all you get of me. Gary Hume get me you surface I lived on nothing for years - squatted where I lived and where I worked, stole electricity, made things from stuff I found in skips, used paper that had been discarded - you do everything you can do to keep going and not have to get a job. Gary Hume nothing job you keep-going It's not part of my ambition to become fabulously rich. My plan was always to make my pictures, and hopefully people would buy them, and then I'd buy a studio, buy a house, help friends out, do bits and bobs - but I've no idea after that. Gary Hume pictures friends ambition people I want to paint something that's gorgeous, something that's perfect. So that it's full of sadness. Gary Hume something sadness perfect want I love to see a wood full of bluebells. Growing up in the Kent countryside, I have special memories of this brief annual spectacle. Gary Hume growing-up special love memories I found that gloss paint suited me entirely, and its qualities still intrigue me. It's viscous and fluid and feels like a pool. It's highly reflective, which means there are layers of looking. You look at the picture, and you look at the surface, then you look at the reflection in the surface behind you, then you look at yourself. Gary Hume yourself me you reflection I'd like to give people leaden boots in galleries, so they'd be a bit slower in front of my paintings. And that's because I spend so much time looking at them. I can look at them a long, long time without getting bored. I disappear. Gary Hume look time long people My mum always liked poetry, and she had pictures on the wall, so there was this visual stuff around. Gary Hume pictures she always poetry Now, I love painting. I love looking. I love the fact that they don't move. They constantly change with the light. They are sort of patient. Gary Hume painting light change love All art becomes history as soon as it is made, so it is inevitably part of a tradition. It doesn't matter a toss if it is in paint or in film; it is all art. Gary Hume tradition matter history art I think Picasso is more feminine than Matisse. Gary Hume i-think than more think I'm probably not going to develop to a final state as an artist. Like, become better and better, more and more refined. Become 'pure.' I don't think that's going to happen to me, because I don't really see that as something I want to explore. Gary Hume better think me artist
